CASTES
This shows the trails of some globules of colour. Several bodies eject them as they move. Each of these bodies belongs to one of four castes according to the colour of the globules it ejects.
The short story was once the grandame of the fiction world. Writers like Arthur Conan Doyle made their fortunes off the short story. Writers like Dickens turned out a lot of short stories to supplement their serial income (and the serial was itself, in effect, a short-storyisation of the novel). Nowadays, the short story is a bare flicker in the background of the landscape of the novel. Writers produce the occasional book of collected tales, but only after writing the stories in drips and drabs over years. No sane editor commissions a collection of short stories from scratch and expects to make real money. So what happened? Continue reading
THE BACKYARD GOAT: AN INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO KEEPING AND ENJOYING PET GOATS, FROM
FEEDING AND HOUSING TO MAKING YOUR OWN CHEESE
Weaver, Sue (Storey Publishing, LLC, 2011, ISBN 978-1603427906)
Years ago, in the intolerable heat of late December, I found myself stuck in the checkout queue at Coles. Somebody had told the man in front of me that if he drove in from Rosebud, Coles would sell him a whole goat. The preposterousness of the incident gave the employees some much needed respite from the toil of the Christmas season, so in spite of the rush, four of them ministered to him. It made tough going for the caprinophage. However plausible his accusations, four employees stood on hand to deny them.
“But I confirmed it,” he said. Continue reading
Today I’m going to discuss covers and design. A hugely important aspect of self-publishing is creating (or paying someone else to create) a cover that conveys what your book is about and entices readers to click it, download it and even perhaps pay for it. Continue reading
The Poems of Ossian were in their day one of the most influential works of the romantic movement. Collected from oral storytellers by the scholar James Macpherson in the Scottish western highlands and islands, the poems relate the exploits of the legendary Gaelic figure Fionn mac Cumhaill in their Scottish rather than Irish forms.
Only they don’t, as they were more or less completely faked.
THE VIRTUAL FUTURE
Bainbridge, William Sims (Springer, 2011, ISBN 9780857299031)
A few years ago, Colin, Owen and I filmed two cringeworthy little videos as part of a plot to send one of our number to Iceland,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspRGw00O2U
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmhAqoYgtgQ,
Today, I discovered synopses of the two, running to about three-quarters of a page, in William Bainbridge’s The Virtual Future,
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=WPcSFaXcEd4C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA127#v=onepage&q&f=false
YARE
I wrote this for a flute, percussion instruments and bass. Please forgive the midi instruments. For the sheet music, go to:
For the sound file, go to:
BOOK OF EXODUS
Chapter 21 (Holy Bible, ISBN for example 9780060649234)
Without any warning, my neighbour put three poodles in his yard. He went from none to three in a single black afternoon. After that he paid them little attention. As far as you could tell, they never left the yard. From morning until night they bombarded the neighbourhood with shrill barrages of barking that tore your concentration in two. They’d cease just long enough to let you collect your thoughts back together before shattering them again with the next barrage.
When home, their owner would bawl at them to shut up from behind his screen door. On other evenings, enraged neighbours assumed the role. It seemed like just a matter of time before some neighbour rationalised euthanizing them with poisoned meatballs. Continue reading
WALLETS
I lost my first wallet in 1998. To replace the driver’s license I needed to book an appointment, pose for the replacement photograph and then tram back in to collect it two weeks later.
When I lost the next one in 2001, the delay had lengthened to three weeks. Continue reading
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER
Dir. Norman Tokar Perf. Jerry Mathers and Hugh Beaumont. Gomalco Productions 1957-1963
I hung this jacket on my clothesline in 2006 (photos below). Through that summer, the sun bleached it from black to grey. In autumn it faded to white at the high points, but you could still find some of the original black in the valleys of its folds.
Next spring a colony of weevils built a nest under one of the sleeves. But in summer, a competing colony of earwigs from the collar drove them from the jacket. Continue reading
SPARKS
This shows the trails of some sparks. Several objects spit them out as they move. Each of these objects belongs to one of four classes according to the colour of the sparks it spits:
Each class, in turn, belongs to one of two pairs: Continue reading
I have been thinking a lot about the craft aspects of writing recently. Earlier I posted about Social Setting. Today I wanted to take a look at the villain or antagonist.
If you hunt around online, poking sticks at essays on writing, you’ll find a reasonable amount of advice on how to make your villains unique, or human, or something different from the cliches. The villain who is evil and knows it obviously strains credulity, but I wanted to do a little more careful thinking about this. Below the cut are some points of thought. Continue reading